Posted
by
Soulskill
on Wednesday May 29, 2013 @06:17PM
from the ruining-it-for-everyone dept.

An anonymous reader writes "After having first decided against forcing a suspect to decrypt a number of hard drives that were believed to be his and to contain child pornography, a U.S. judge has changed his mind and has now ordered the suspect to provide law enforcement agents heading the investigation with a decrypted version of the contents of his encrypted data storage system, or the passwords needed to decrypt forensic copies of those storage devices. Jeffrey Feldman, a software developer at Rockwell Automation, has still not been charged with any crime, and the prosecution initially couldn't prove conclusively that the encrypted hard drives contained child pornography or were actually Feldman's, which led U.S. Magistrate Judge William Callahan to decide that forcing him to decrypt them would violate his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. But new evidence has made the judge reverse his first decision (PDF): the FBI has continued to try to crack the encryption on the discs, and has recently managed to decrypt and access one of the suspect's hard drives... The storage device was found to contain 'an intricate electronic folder structure comprised of approximately 6,712 folders and subfolders,' approximately 707,307 files (among them numerous files which constitute child pornography), detailed personal financial records and documents belonging to the suspect, as well as dozens of his personal photographs."

Reading that made me ask three questions:
1) What kind of encryption did the FBI break?
2) Can they do it again, for any arbitrary encrypted data?
3) If 2), what kind of decryption should we use instead of 1) ?

All of this information is in the initial filing, which wired posted here, including the fact that the government figured out partial patterns to his passwords. You should read the filing, though I warn you, you will want to retch by the end of it:http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2013/04/fedswantdecryption.pdf

After reading the request, I am amazed that the judge issued the first ruling at all. The download logs clearly showed entries that graphically describe pedophilia being written to a secure disk. I think the agents freaked out a bit, and assumed the disks would self destruct (as far as I know, the maxtor disks don't in fact do so).

I know it's unpopular to say on slashdot, but the government has a job to do, and is doing it well.

Yes and no. If the download records isn't enough to convict - too bad. Encrypted data are private by every standard no matter what they can decode to. This is analogous to copy protection. In most countries where you are allowed to make private copies of copyrighted stuff, you're not allowed to break the copy protection in order to do so. Same thing should apply to private data - if they're encrypted in a non-trivial way, they're off limits to the authorities.

Not quite true, although it is a fair counter-argument. Thoughts (brains) cannot currently be 'searched' and thus anything that requires those thoughts to get to (in an understandable form). The issue with thoughts is that there's very little you can do if someone refuses to share them except punish them for not sharing them. If the guy had said he couldn't remember the password, do you allow a judge to lock him up on the basis that he doesn't believe it?

Say the FBI suddenly raided you, and brought you up on say, pedophilia charges. They confiscate your computer hardware, as is standard procedure.

Now, I'm going to take a leap of faith here and presume you have no child porn on your PC. And for the sake of my point, no encryption. But they are sure you have it somewhere, so they naturally assume that you must have encrypted ghost partitions or whatever on your hard drive(s). Maybe they even have a log provided by your ISP that says at one point, you navigated to a website that provided such encryption software in the last decade. They demand that you hand over your passwords for your encrypted drives.

Or, to use your example with the safe, say that safe was in the house that you bought, and didn't get the combination for it from the previous owners. Maybe it was hidden, and you didn't even know of its existence before the feds demanded you hand over the combination.

Being brought up on charges for forgetting or even "forgetting" your password to incriminating evidence is already bad enough. But the scenario above is what I'm truly afraid of. The problem is, in some cases they could be treated the exact same if the judge sides with the authorities after hearing your "excuses".

After reading the request, I am amazed that the judge issued the first ruling at all. The download logs clearly showed entries that graphically describe pedophilia being written to a secure disk. I think the agents freaked out a bit, and assumed the disks would self destruct (as far as I know, the maxtor disks don't in fact do so).

I know it's unpopular to say on slashdot, but the government has a job to do, and is doing it well.

Regardless of the circumstances, ordering someone to decrypt a hard drive should be against the 5th amendment. I look at this the same way as any other "evidence is in a very hard place to get" situation.

If I lock evidence in a locker or a house, the authorities are going to break my lock or break down the door. They can't order me to give them the key if the location of the key is unknown to them. If I have an electronic keypad, they can't order me to give them the passcode.

If I kill someone and, having decided that a "shallow grave" is likely going to get me caught, bury the body in a 1000ft grave (suppose I own a drilling company), they can't make me dig up that body. It is upon them to dig it up. If I weigh someone down and dump them in the ocean, they can't force me to tell them the exact latitude/longitude. They can gather evidence all day long through any legal means, but forcing someone to actively incriminate themselves has never been, and should not be, legal in the US.

The fact that we now have locks that are effectively unpickable and unbreakable is unfortunate for law enforcement, but that doesn't change the 5th amendment.
There should be no exceptions. The nature of the crime or the amount of other evidence doesn't matter to the 5th amendment.

That's not the issue. The government has a job to do, but they have certain responsibilities. The police are allowed to lie, cheat, threaten, frighten, and do all kinds of things to bend a confession out of someone; these confessions are then admissible in court. Police are not well-trained interrogators; a well-trained interrogator could get anyone to confess to anything in short order. Still, locking an innocent young woman in a room with a big scary angry police man is going to get some level of cooperation...

Do we want this? Do we want thug-cops that beat confessions out of people, psychologically or physically? Do we want courts that say, "Well, we know you're guilty, so give us all the evidence against yourself and fuck constitutional law!"? Do we want wide-spread surveillance because you have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide? How about inventing charges using collected circumstantial evidence to get rid of people who are not criminals, but are undesirable in society and not really liked by anyone anyway?

The real issue is this: The government is power. People in the government have power. That makes them your adversary. You want it to be hard for them to exercise power over you and anyone else; if you're a criminal, well damn, but in support of *my* interests I hope it's very hard for them to nail *you* even though I think you should be locked up. If you murder someone, I hope they just *barely* manage to get a conviction after a huge fucking ass-dance and tons of sunken public money and massive investigations turning up some damn solid evidence before they execute you, just so the next guy whose house burned down from a fire started in a garage near a can of kerosene isn't executed because "it looks like he murdered his family, due to the use of an accelerant to start the fire some time shortly after he left his home". You fucking prove it.

[sci.crypt newsgroup] The technique of breaking a code or cipher by
finding someone who has the key and applying a rubber hose vigorously and
repeatedly to the soles of that luckless person's feet until the key is
discovered. Shorthand for any method of coercion: the originator of the
term drily noted that it can take a surprisingly short time and is
quite computationally inexpensive relative to other cryptanalysis
methods. Compare social engineering [catb.org],brute force. [catb.org]

And, of course, this is exactly how it is done when the answer need not be admissible in court.

I'm a doctor. I know about pain. What causes it. What stops it. All the different types of it, and the ways to cause each one (and for how long). One of my professors during residency had been recruited back in the 80s by a Central American country to assist it with some interrogations.

I don't enjoy watching people suffer. That's a good thing, because I would be very good at making it happen.

Far more relevant here is what justification the judge thought he was using to order the suspect to give up his password. Because in order to do that, according to current legal precedent, the government has to already know, "with reasonable particularity", that the ENCRYPTED disks contain illegal material.

Some different encrypted disk doesn't count. Nor does "reasonable suspicion", nor even probable cause. In order to force th

Conspiracy bits aside, if the FBI found something, why would they demand he open the gates to more?

Could they not simply prosecute him based on just what they have so far? That way there would be no 5th Amendment violation, and they would (should?) have sufficient evidence so far to successfully prosecute him anyway.

an intricate electronic folder structure comprised of approximately 6,712...

has absolutely no technical standing and contains all marketing words. If they successfully decrypted asingle drive, and found evidence, it is strong enough to build a case.

Encryption is boolean; you either discovered the key, or you haven't. There isn't a "key" out there the willgive a "partial" decryption. This is nonsense. So, what is happening is that they have evidence to move forwardwith an indictment, but they're trying to set a legal precedented to override the 5th for future cases, IMHO.

This is basically the same tactic used in U.S. schools on the children now a days. You know, Billy said you did it,so why don't you tell us what you did...

Well look at it this way, going by the blurb for the low-info voters, everyone is now guilty of having child porn.

When you stop the quote at "6712 folders", yes, it might look that way. When you consider that the remainder of that sentence talks about images that are child porn in those folders, I think most people will recognize that the relevant criterion for being guilty of possession of child porn is not just "6712 folders".

Agreed. Besides, they're making things up -->
an intricate electronic folder structure comprised of approximately 6,712...

You're accusing them of making up the numbers, or of using non-technical language when they described the contents of the disk? Yes, they used non-technical language, but I think it would be easy to imagine what "an intricate folder structure" would mean, and to understand that the important part of the document is the "6712 folders" and seven hundred thousand plus images they contain.

If they successfully decrypted a
single drive, and found evidence, it is strong enough to build a case.

It is.

Encryption is boolean; you either discovered the key, or you haven't. There isn't a "key" out there the will
give a "partial" decryption.

Where did you come up with the phrase "partial decryption"? They decrypted one of the disks they had, the rest remain unbroken.

So, what is happening is that they have evidence to move forward
with an indictment, but they're trying to set a legal precedented to override the 5th for future cases, IMHO.

Or they're trying to recover files that might help identify new victims or show a trail of transfers that will lead to other criminals.

This is basically the same tactic used in U.S. schools on the children now a days. You know, Billy said you did it,

No, it is more than "Billy said". They've got the files and sufficient evidence to show that the disks belong to the alleged criminal. He's already been incriminated, it's a "foregone conclusion" at this point. He's not even being forced to tell the cops his password/passphrase, he's only instructed to enter it unobserved into the system so the disks will be unencrypted. So you can't argue that they cops are learning anything new regarding putting this guy in prison. "Oooh, your passphrase is 'i hid the body under the old oak tree out back', we're going diggin..."

The foregone conclusion they're talking about is just that the drives are his.

He's not even being forced to tell the cops his password/passphrase, he's only instructed to enter it unobserved into the system so the disks will be unencrypted.

That's a distinction that only a lawyer would think mattered.

So you can't argue that they cops are learning anything new regarding putting this guy in prison.

Additional counts. Other crimes. All kinds of incriminating stuff could be on the other drives.

If their real interest was in using the stuff on the other drives to pursue other criminals, they cut cut him a deal (somewhat reduced sentence, whatever) to get him to decrypt them. That's a tactic they use all the time, and often with good reason. Here they want an Alice in Wonderland interpretation of the 5th.

Because the prosecutor hasn't filed charges yet. They're still working on the case.

You make it sound like "gosh, we just haven't gotten around to it yet". If they had any real evidence they could, and should, charge him in a heartbeat. Then they can keep him in jail or push for a very high bail (easy in a CP case), which makes him much less of a flight risk than just being a suspect. If they're "still working on the case" after that they can always add more charges later.

And that the images of [CP] on them are his. You forgot that tiny detail.

They don't know what's on the drives that are still encrypted. You forgot that tiny detail. If there was real CP on what they did decrypt then there is no excuse for not charging him ASAP.

It is a distinction that shows he's not being forced to provide information that the government doesn't already possess.

Of course he's being asked to provide information they don't already possess. Why else would they be trying to get it? What the "foregone conclusion" exception to the 5th means is that you have to hand over evidence, not information, if they can show it's a foregone conclusion that the evidence exists.

They'll be in a much better position to offer a deal when the full extent of the crime is known.

That's true. Unfortunately the Bill of Rights sometimes makes the work of police and prosecutors more difficult. That's the price we pay for a society where the government can't arrest and imprison anybody they want. The people who wrote and ratified the Bill of Rights were no fools. Each and every right in there was to prevent government abuses that had a long history.

Both are 'neutral' and will not in themselves yield any evidence. They can both be obtained without the cooperation of the accused, both directly (using swabs) and indirectly (using prints or hair left during interrogation or similar). A password cannot. It requires the cooperation of the accused as it can only be retrieved from the memory of this person.

and to understand that the important part of the document is the "6712 folders" and seven hundred thousand plus images they contain.

Seven hundred thousand files. But you genuinely heard it in your head as "images", right? And that is why prosecutors play such word games with, what should be, mundane technical information, because it does the same thing with the judge and jury.

Conspiracy bits aside, if the FBI found something, why would they demand he open the gates to more?

Could they not simply prosecute him based on just what they have so far? That way there would be no 5th Amendment violation, and they would (should?) have sufficient evidence so far to successfully prosecute him anyway.

[ Realize up front that I think people like they are accusing the defendant of being should probably burn, not in Hell, but in the here and now... ]

I imagine it's to set a precedent.

If the demand is not successfully defended against, they are more likely to be granted a future order without expending "considerable resources". The next time, they will be able to argue "we could expend considerable resources and crack this drive too, but since it's going to be decrypted one way or the other, you might as well have him hand over the keys now". It's a really thin wedge, given that the FBI claiming someone owns a drive when they don't claim ownership, so 5th amendment considerations would likely still attach, but they might be able to find an agreeable judge to push the precedent a little further.

Using the sparing sector list as part of the key might confound decryption, if the encryption is drive level rather than all in user space where it could be fed a false set of sparing sectors, so it's possible that future SanDisk products (among other SSD vendors) might be immune from use of forensic copies.

I think though, that 5th amendment issues might still attach, if they can't demonstrate that he actually has the keys. It'll be interesting to see if the defense tries to play it that way, and what results, if any, come from that angle.

The "it's manufactured data" angle would also be interesting, since presumably they could have obtained pictures and financial data from other sources to make it appear that way. Given that the FBI has "considerable resources" to expend on this type of thing, it's not that unreasonable to ask how those resources were expended: decrypting the drive, or manufacturing evidence which can only be disproven if the drive is decrypted with the keys he may or may not have in his possession, since if it's manufactured, it might still not be his drive.

I'm glad the court ruled against the forced decryption initially, and it will be interesting to see how this plays out, and whether the FBI gets their wedge, and if so, they are successful in using it to leverage further erosions of 5th amendment in a future case, or not.

The "it's manufactured data" angle would also be interesting, since presumably they could have obtained pictures and financial data from other sources to make it appear that way. Given that the FBI has "considerable resources" to expend on this type of thing, it's not that unreasonable to ask how those resources were expended: decrypting the drive, or manufacturing evidence which can only be disproven if the drive is decrypted with the keys he may or may not have in his possession, since if it's manufactured, it might still not be his drive.

You have a problem here. All the feds have to do is go before the judge, start with an archived copy of the original disk which can be proven to be bitwise identical, apply the correct decryption process, and when out pops all the data they claim was there you'll have to explain how they got the original encrypted bytes to decrypt directly into the alleged criminal data.

I think the chances of there being a "key" that results in enough data for a criminal prosecution when applied to innocuous encrypted data are very very very slim.

I don't see how suspect could plead the 5th in this situation, as doing so implies this encrypted drive is his, and that he knows the password and contents (as otherwise there is no ground to plead the 5th). To get to that point, the prosecution would first have to prove the drives are indeed his.

But this guy is just suspected of possessing child pornography, not making it, right?
Raping children is bad and all, but if that is the case, this is a ridiculous attempt to control what people fap to rather than an attempt to prevent more child rape.

but they would also lose the intelligence windfall of any data that might be on the other drives.

I wouldn't call porn of any kind an "intelligence windfall". They would find more porn to wank to. That doesn't seem like a sufficiently good reason to shit all over the 5th amendment. They already have enough evidence to convict. There is no reason whatsover to decrypt the other drives. Drives which they clearly have the capacity to decrypt themselves anyway. No. The only purpose here is to increase the power of the FBI in future cases by setting a precedent that the 5th amendment can be safely ignored. Well as long as the crime someone is being accused of is an unpopular one.

Perhaps we need a new form or encryption which offers two views of the encrypted storage. One view hides the content, the other exposes it normally.

Or, perhaps the second password offers a self destruct.

I guarantee you they have a bit level copy of the drive. I'm sure these guys are smart enough to not work on the original drive. Destroying one wouldn't do much but make them start working on another backup.

See, this is where I don't get it. If I were to be storing info that I didn't people to get... weather it be child porn like this guy or I had some super sekret government documents, I wouldn't rely encryption at all. Just put the computers on UPS's, then coat the hardrives with phosphorus. Glue a model rocket igniter to the works and hook it up to a relay. When they pull the plug on the computer, it ignites and the hard drive turns into a pool of goo.

Who even said that it was self-destruct? Maybe it was mishandled by the forensic computer professional and they accidently corrupted it...

If the first step on investigating the drives wasn't to find other identical drives and to do a sector-by-sector full disk copy from the original followed by archiving the original in the Evidence File, continuing to work only on the copy, then that's sloppy investigative work on something of this scale.

Well the legal definition specifies "lascivious" media rather than some laundry list of people, poses and acts. I suspect there's Kim Possible and My Little Pony erotic fan-art posted on Tumblr and Deviantart that meets the technical criteria for child pornography every day.

Well the legal definition specifies "lascivious" media rather than some laundry list of people, poses and acts. I suspect there's Kim Possible and My Little Pony erotic fan-art posted on Tumblr and Deviantart that meets the technical criteria for child pornography every day.

Yes, that is true. Child Pornography is a scare word to make jurors convict. In reality, the legal definition of child pornography, while varying by location, may constitute such things as:
Nude pictures or movies of a 1 year old
Depictions of sex or nudity of a 17.999999 year old even if they look 25 years old.
Depictions of sex or nudity where someone holds the opinion that they look less than 18 years old even if they are 25 years old.
Pictures or movies depicting sex with a greater than 18 year old who is dressed in schoolgirl outfit or wearing pigtails in an attempt to look like a less than 18 year old even if it is still obvious that they are 25 years old or even older.
Pictures or movies depicting sex with 30 to 40 year old women filed under the heading "Teen Sex".
Pictures or movies of cartoons depicting nudity or sex of characters whom someone holds the opinion that the character looks less old than a real life18 year old.
Nude or partially unclothed photos taken of themselves by owners of a phone who are less than 18, or appear to be less than 18 or who are trying to appear to be less than 18.

He should inform the honorable judge that he's forgotten the decryption parameters or whatever they are called.

This way, he puts the ball back into their court. That is, to prove that he indeed still remembers these parameters.

Not at all. First, informing the judge that he's forgotten the decryption parameters would have been an awful stupid move. "Having forgotten" would have implied that he once knew them, which would have been proof that the hard drives were his. Second, since the drives are now known to be his because the FBI encrypted a drive, refusing to decrypt would now be taken as evidence that he's got something to hide, basically an admission of guilt.

The laws have exceptions for law enforcement personnel who view it in the course of their duties. And more generally, there are a lot of judgement calls and grey areas in the law. A picture of your daughter in the bathtub making a funny face in along with the rest of your family photos? No problem. The same image in a folder marked "jerkoff material" would be illegal.

Then, when asked for the password, he could truthfully state that his answer is "I do not have the password". Of course, a few weasely questions that he may be required to answer truthfully could shake this, but hey, why not for a first step?

Or possibly:

"I don't need no stinkin' password"

"This is not my drive."

"I forgot my password" as the passphrase!

"I assert my fifth amendment rights"

"I respectfully assert my fifth amendment rights"

"Fuck you" (J_1: what is your password? R_1: fuck you J1:Que? Off to jail! R_1: I answered fully and truthfully!)

Most real LEOs don't understand the whole concept of right or wrong. At best they might understand the difference between legal and illegal.The idea that LEOs care about right and wrong is a myth based on Hollywood screen writers who've probably never actually met a real cop.

having an "intricate electronic folder structure" complete with "detailed personal information" is nefarious? Isn't that, essentially, every install of every desktop OS ever?
Hell, I think in my 13k file music collection sorted by album and artist there's EASILY 3k folders. And I think elsewhere on the same drive I have my tax returns...

Where pixels of a certain colour arranged in a certain way on a screen and even the bits used to represent them are illegal. I hate kiddy porn as much as everyone else but feck it throwing people in jail for looking at pictures is taking the piss.

So you wouldn't mind if pictures of you being raped were being looked at on the internet? Fair enough, personally I'd have a problem with that and want it to be a crime to look at them, but maybe that's just me, I have been known to be a little odd.

So you wouldn't mind if pictures of you being raped were being looked at on the internet? Fair enough, personally I'd have a problem with that and want it to be a crime to look at them, but maybe that's just me, I have been known to be a little odd.

Well, when someone puts a 1px hidden IFRAME in a cross site scripting or SQL injection exploit will you still "want it to be a crime" when you're thrown in jail for your regular downloading of illegal 1's and 0's? This isn't hypothetical. I clean this shit of of servers about 3 times a year. Skiddies are thumbing their nose at the idea of their teen girlfriend sexting pics being, "child porn". They're putting their own ex GFs pics online as well as "loli" manga pics they find attractive. Now, that means you should go and shred your hard drive and encrypt the fuck out of it. If you've been anywhere online you could have kiddie porn on your PC. Just the way the police state likes it... They have an excuse and evidence to hunt any "witch" they want.

Personally, I have been raped. I wouldn't give a rats ass if you want to look at pics of it, so long as you're not raping me or anyone else to get new pics. Folks looking at what constitutes child porn these days could be looking at voluntarily taken "selfies" and drawings. Kids taking nudes of themselves aren't raping themselves. Drawings aren't alive.

Furthermore, my little brother was being threatened and had fist sized rocks thrown at him when he was walking past a middle school. We reported the kids to the police. Guess what? THEY CAN'T DO ANYTHING. There has been no crime unless he actually gets injured. Unless you're actually raping a kid, no one is being harmed by looking at images. It shouldn't be illegal unless they want to actually start arresting people for THINKING about assault -- They're not even arresting folks for Actual Attempted Assault.

I assume the punishment represents retribution for the harm done at the time of the image's creation. That doesn't bother me. What bothers me is that the same mentality cannot be applied to images created wholly out of the image creator's mind and yet those images are subject to the same prosecution. That bothers me a great deal.

It is brilliant. Do you REALLY want to be the person who opposes this? That would make you an instant supporter of child pornography. Absolutely brilliant on their part. As I age and care less about my reputation I grow more willing to consider fighting for these folks. However, I'm not so sure how my neighbors will take it if I'm known as the guy who thwarted the child porn laws. But, as I mentioned, my age and lessening care about my reputation make it more likely. Now to find a lawyer/liar to take some c

So I just read the judge's order granting the ex parte request, and there is something I am confused about. If the 'limited decrypted version' they supposedly have contained child pornography why is he still not charged with a crime? Something seems fishy here.

I'm willing to bet they have the file structure (names of files) but have no actual file data, in which case the governments request would add a lot to the case instead of the "little to none" the judge is using to justify the use of the forgone conclusion doctrine.

Not defending anyone for child pornography, I just like everyone else don't like seeing the forced self incrimination of people using the 5th amendment.

I'm guessing it's this part of it that protected him:"nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself"

There's no clause in the fifth amendment that says "...but if we have good evidence you're guilty, then you have to tell us what we need to know in order to get more evidence."

The police put you in a room and say "CONFESS", and you refuse. Judge says "that's right--you don't have to confess to anything. In fact, you don't have to say anything at all. You can remain silent."Later, the police find some evidence that suggests you really did something illegal. And really socially repulsive.

Judge thinks for 2 seconds and realizes "Who's going to defend a kiddy diddler? I can rule however I want against this guy and get almost no political backlash. But if I "defend the constitution", I'm a liberal judge letting a monster get away on a technicality." Not a difficult decision for a pragmatic public servant. "Let the beatings begin.".

First they came for the child rapists and I said nothing because everyone would think I was one, too.

Absent any proof there was child porn on the drives the suspect couldn't be compelled to decrypt them to provide that evidence.

The FBI however was free to try and decrypt the drives.

After proving that drives at least contained some child porn it was no longer possible.

Imagine the same scenario with a house. The police think you have a grow op. But they don't have any actual proof of a grow up. They have a power bill, show up at your door and you say 'sorry, I run a server farm, not a grow op, no you cannot come in'. The police not believing this story keep snooping around, they watch you bring in lamps and fertilizer and numerous suspicious people bringing packages out. Eventually they get some sort of valid evidence that you have at least one growing illegal plant in your house. Now they can get a warrant, and you have to let them in.

You don't have to provide the police a key to your house, unless they can convince a judge there is definitely something illegal hidden behind your front door. Then you're boned.

You don't have to provide the police a key to your house, unless they can convince a judge there is definitely something illegal hidden behind your front door.

This is the crucial issue, which you are glossing over. You DON'T have to provide the police a key to your house, even if they can convince a judge that there is definitely something illegal hidden behind your front door. If the cops show up to your house with a warrant, there's no requirement that you unlock the door for them. If you don't, they'll just break the door down.

What's happening here is quite different. The judge is compelling this man to assist the police who are trying to incriminate him. This is like issuing a search warrant where you are compelled to tell the police where your hiding places are.

I think that a safe is the more common close analogy. If the FBI can prove to a judge's satisfaction that the safe is yours and contains illegal substances, you can be ordered to open it, and failure to comply is contempt of court. The only difference is that if you refuse with a safe, the FBI has (more destructive) ways to open it themselves.

Absent any proof there was child porn on the drives the suspect couldn't be compelled to decrypt them to provide that evidence.

The FBI however was free to try and decrypt the drives.

After proving that drives at least contained some child porn it was no longer possible.

Imagine the same scenario with a house. The police think you have a grow op. But they don't have any actual proof of a grow up. They have a power bill, show up at your door and you say 'sorry, I run a server farm, not a grow op, no you cannot come in'. The police not believing this story keep snooping around, they watch you bring in lamps and fertilizer and numerous suspicious people bringing packages out. Eventually they get some sort of valid evidence that you have at least one growing illegal plant in your house. Now they can get a warrant, and you have to let them in.

You don't have to provide the police a key to your house, unless they can convince a judge there is definitely something illegal hidden behind your front door. Then you're boned.

Better analogy: the police suspect you have a grow op. They cordon off your house, and proceed to try to pick the lock on your front door. Having done that, and gone in and found evidence of wrongdoing, they are now asking a judge to compel you to unlock all your other properties, so the FBI may conduct a further fishing expedition to see if you have anything else they can charge you for.

You are an idiot, and I doubt if you even understand what pedophilia is. Most pedophiles are not child molesters. Most child molesters are not pedophiles. Pedophilia is a psychological condition that causes someone to be sexually attracted to prepubescent children. But most people that feel this attraction do not act on it (since to do so is a serious crime). Most people charged as child molesters, on the other hand, are not pedophiles. They are not attracted to prepubescent children. Instead they are attracted to teenagers that are legally children, but biologically most certainly are not.

But the defendant in this case has not been accused of either pedophilia (which is not a crime) nor child molestation. He has been accused of possessing child pornography, which is a crime even if no actual children are involved. Computer generated animation, or even a pencil sketch can get you arrested. You want to castrate people for drawing pictures?

Your understanding is horrifically wrong. Your guess at "facts" is laughable. It wouldn't be laughable except you're in the minority and won't actually have any impact. What pedophiles need is mental health care, not prison. Unless, of course, they've actually caused harm (only a small percentage has, you're mistaken with your assumptions that you seem to think are facts) and if they've caused harm they need to see the inside of a correctional facility until they've reached the point where they're able to accept the help from mental health and are able to not harm in the future.

I did a whole bunch of research (I was bored, drinking, and legitimately curious as I don't see the attraction and wanted to understand) for a Fark thread at one point. I, too, thought similarly to how you seem to think. I was wrong, very much so, and have no problem changing my views based on the facts. You're a zealot on a witch hunt and will be seen as one as the tides turn. They're already starting to turn with more people being made aware of the facts and changing their views of registries and extreme punishments.

Actually seek out the facts and respond accordingly if you want. It is not difficult. Follow some links, read some studies, and then make up your mind. Until then you're operating based on myths and hyperbole. If that's what you want to do then all the more power to you but the rest of the world isn't going to join you and will find your credibility lacking.

Yeah pedophiles and their pictures of half naked 16 year old girls are sick. I reported my brother yesterday for taking pictures of his daughters football game, sick fuck, doesn't he know there are half naked 16 year old girls bouncing around down there?

But child pornography, in most instances is not depicting sex with children, but sex with underage minors, for instance, a 17 year old, or someone who looks like they are 17.
Yes, people who want to have sex with children is wrong, but the law is expanded far beyond this and people get crazy with the CP label because the law is far too wide. Just like peeing in your back yard can get you slapped with a "sexual offender" label for life, so can publicizing photos of your 25 year old girlfriend who looks 17 get you labeled as a CP distributor.
This is why I don't jump off the deep end and call this guy a monster. For all we know the CP he enjoys looking at is 20 year old women that look young. I sure wouldn't fault him for that. If it is photos of kids, then I agree, he is one sick bastard. But we don't know that, because the law is too broad, so why assume? it just gets you worked up. If you were a juror, that is exactly what they would be going for, too.

Also, if they actually found kiddie pron on the portion that they decrypted, why hasn't he been charged?

Because they're still building the case, of course. The fact that they haven't charged him based on what they already have is irrelevant. They are under no compulsion to rush. Once he's charged the right to a speedy trial kicks in.

The police probably have good reason to want access to all the material. It may lead them to the source of these files or even the creators. And now that they have him on possession of kiddie porn, I suppose forcing him to decrypt the rest doesn't constitute self-incrimination (not sure how US law works). And there's no right not to incriminate other suspects.

Interestingly, I recall a sort of similar case here in Europe: a guy was forced to provide financial details; there was a suspicion of widesprea

Let's say you killed 5 people with 5 different guns and you put each of those guns in a separate safe. The government comes along and unlocks one of the safes and inside that safe is the purchase receipt for all five safes with your name on it (thus proving you own and have access to all the safes). By your logic, they've got a good case for murder on the basis of what they found in one safe, so they should just leave the other four alone.

What the judge is saying is that now that the government can show that you own (and have access to) the other safes and now that they can show it's likely they'll find the other four guns in those safes, there's no longer a Fifth Amendment question since you're not self-incriminating (by providing previously unknown or unprovable evidence against yourself). Rather, it becomes an issue of restricting access to evidence the government already knows about. In other words, the judge can't force you to open a random safe that may or may not be your's, and you can't be ordered to produce a murder weapon you may or may possess or have access to, but you most certainly can be forced to provide access to an area or container which is provably your's and which is likely to contain material evidence of your crimes.

It's a kinda roundabout way of saying, "You can't [or at least don't need to] give or show them the secret spell, but you better perform it and release the rune for the witches to see, or may they rain hell on you from every applicable plane of existence."

Most likely it is a bullshit move by the prosecution to circumvent the judge's initial decision.

Look your honor we have cracked the encryption on hard drive one (assemble some PDF's from his bank statements which they might have gotten through a search warrant they don't have to disclose and some random child pornography they have laying around from another case), now his rights don't apply anymore.

(Note: I am not an american citizen and my understanding of the american legal system is therefore limited)

Most American citizens have less of an understanding of how the courts work than you just displayed, in my experience.

In cases like this, the lower judge can make orders which are right or wrong and if you don't think his judgement is correct, you are welcome to appeal to the appeals court. Appeals then allow for the correction of lower court errors and if you don't like the appeals court decision, you are free to try and get the next higher court to hear an appeal.

In federal cases the appeals process ends at the Federal Supreme Court, which can choose to allow an appeal to be argued, overturn the lower court, or simply let the ruling stand as is and not do anything. Usually by the time a case can get to the Supreme Court it will have taken years since someone has been convicted and sentenced. There are similar paths for local and state courts as well as civil and criminal courts. With appeals to a higher court allowed for decisions made in lower ones. But this process is time consuming, expensive, and is likely to take years and years of waiting.

So the individual citizen can, if he has the time and money (or can find somebody who thinks this is important enough to provide the necessary legal services) can keep filing timely appeals and "fight his way to the top." (Or at least as high as the judges will allow).

In this case, I suspect that there will be a number of appeals based on the less than ideal constitutional grounds of the order, but I'm guessing that this guy will either provide the information or be held in contempt and have to appeal.

You're assuming that this wouldn't reveal, say, mistakes on his income tax filings.

I suspect that he did something to get *someone* powerful angry with him. It may or may not have anything to do with anything that has been mentioned. If they are angry enough, and powerful enough, then this could force him to reveal his signing key, which would allow messages ostensibly from him to be forged.

Sorry, I don't see the judge as being anywhere close to the right side of the law as stated by the constitution. Th

Because opening up the contents of the hard drive is not self-incriminating. The incriminating evidence is there, it is just being uncovered.

They already have access to the contents of the hard drive, they just don't understand it. That's their problem. This is not analogous to somebody being forced to hand over incriminating notes under the "foregone conclusion" doctrine. It's analogous to the notes being written in some language the accused invented and only he knows. Here are the notes. You figure them out. Forcing the accused to translate those notes would be requiring him to give testimony against himself.